. >> john kerry is very interested in pursuing this. they knows the region very well, and president obama said, fine -- in a way this trip -- this is an unusual trip in that president obama is advancing the secretary of state, who is here right now, but will be coming back pretty frequently, so president obama is not going to -- he's going to talk about the palestinian issue in his business speech tomorrow, i think, but bakley he's trying to set the stage to reset the relationship with israel, with its government in particular so that john kerry can come in and with new ideas and be received, better than some of obama's first-term ideas were received. so there is a point to this trip, but it's a building block trip. >>> jeff goldberg, thank you very much, as always. >> thank you. >>> and up next, in our "daily fix" who killed the senate assault weapons ban. >>> plus mark sanford survives round 1 in south carolina, and why is bill clinton getting involved in the kentucky democratic senate race against ashley judd? send me your thoughts o